December 8, 2025 – Graduate Program Review Committee (GPRC) – Minutes

Time: Monday at 1:00 p.m. – 2:20 p.m.
Location: Microsoft Teams

Meeting was held online only via Teams

Joshua Mersky, 2025-2026 GPRC Chair

Members Present:      Alexa Anderson, Woonsup Choi, Itziar Lazkano, Joshua Mersky, Krishna Pillai, Christopher Quinn, Kay Wells

Absent:                              Mark Netzloff, Erin Parcell, Anne Pycha, Ora John Reuter, Lorena Terando, Bryan Porter (Graduate School Dean)

Guests:                           Tiffany Nation, Graduate Programs Coordinator; Victoria Moerchen (Ex-Officio, Graduate School); Dave Clark (Office of Academic Affairs); Riley Harrison (Policies and Appeals Coordinator, Graduate School)

1. Call to Order
   1:00 p.m.
2. Announcements
   There were no announcements
3. Automatic Consent
   The following meeting minutes were approved.
   • Approval of meeting minutes from November 10, 2025
4. Revisions to Faculty Doc. No. 3197R1 Graduate Program Reviews (Procedures for Qualitative Reviews of Graduate Programs)
   1. Suggested Revisions to Appendix A for Review and Discussion
   2. Example of Self-Study for an Accreditation from the Social Work, MSW Program:
      1. Program Review of MSW VOLUME 1 MS UW Milwaukee_221_23.pdf
      2. VOLUME 2 – SYLLABI MSW UW Milwaukee 10.24.22.pdf
      3. VOLUME 3 – HANDBOOKS AND MANUALS MSW UW Milwaukee.pdf
      4. Grad School Program May 2025.docx
         
         GPRC Chair Mersky gave strict instructions to the committee to turn on their cameras and requested that all members participate in today’s discussions concerning the Faculty Doc. No. 3197R1 policy suggestions, edits, and revisions.  He provided a summary of the October and November meeting discussions which included counter proposals that were put forth ranging from having an IRT or an internal review team assigned to all accreditation as the same procedure done with regular program reviews.  The questions posed were:  Would they simply review all of the documents that came forward through the accreditation process including the program self-study, the external site report, as well as other supplemental documents like in terms of the documents we might review as an IRT, there was also a proposal put forth possibly that the IRT could even be involved in the accreditation site review process,much like our IRT does now for non-accredited programs, they could be potentially assigned to attend those meetings.
         
         Pursuant to our last meeting on November 10th, we did bring forward these issues to the GFC at a meeting and had a discussion to keep them apprised of what’s going on and also hopefully to help benefit from the wisdom of the GFC. It was, again, mainly just an opportunity for the GFC to ask questions and hear what’s going on concerning the policy revisions. There were not any kind of grand resolutions at GFC or any new proposals necessary.
         
         To provide a historical overview, first off, I want to highlight some things that the committee agreed upon.  Number one, there was universal consensus that the GPRC should have oversight role in the approval of all programs, accredited or otherwise. There was also an agreement that the initial proposal to have any report for an accredited program move through an automatic consent process was unwise and that at minimum would want to have a voice vote for those programs. We agreed upon, that it is important for us to consider reducing burden and duplication.
         
         Some things that had not yet reached consensus on represent some of our key questions for today’s discussions are, if we are going to have an internal review team involved in reviewing accreditation processes.
         
         First of all, is that going to be required or not required?  If it is required, then what will they do?  Will they be involved in the actual site visits, formal site visits of accredited programs or not? And if they are, is that on a voluntary basis or on a mandatory basis?
         
         Secondly, if they’re not involved in the site visits, are they going to be asked to review all of the documents that emerge from an accreditation process? An example of what those documents would look like potentially have been provided for your review.
         
         Last, if they’re going to be asked to review documents.  What will they be asked to produce?  Presumably some kind of brief report.  And then most critically, if they do that, what would be the timeline for accomplishing those activities and how can we balance the needs of the committee to produce its report and provide oversight while also honoring the academic planning processes of the university?
         
         Dave Clark, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, informed the committee after reviewing program review procedures at other institutions the APCC decided not to conduct reviews for undergraduate programs of specialized accreditation for this fall.  The APCC is requesting that undergraduate programs submit their self-studies and their materials to the APCC but will not be conducting a formal review.  He provided information on the UW-Madison’s program review process which includes a specialized waive process for accreditations in their policy.  The self-studies and everything for programs of specialized accreditation are required, but they do have an expectation at the graduate level of a review. The special wave process consists of an appointed person who reads through all the specialized accreditation materials and prepares a report suitable for the presumably the equivalent of the GPA.
         
         Chair Mersky thanked Clark and informed the committee that some kind of agreement about how we want to proceed needs to be established.  He recommended taking the separate yet interconnected issues one by one. He suggested starting with a proposal.  Pillai made a motion that an IRT should be assigned to all programs, accredited, or otherwise.  The motion was seconded.  The motion passed with a count of four to three.
         
         With the motion passing, the next steps are to determine if we’re going to assign internal review teams to the review of accredited programs and what will they do?  Mersky requested that the committee start with the issue of the site visits first and address the question how we want to handle site visits with an internal review team?
         
         Discussion took place.
         
         Chair Mersky requested that the suggested revisions per today’s committee discussion and approve vote be made to the policy to be reviewed at the February 2026 meeting.  At that time, the committee will decide if the submitted edits are acceptable to vote to approve the revisions to the policy.  Associate Dean Moerchen will edit revisions and prepare the policy.
         
         V.           Other Business
         Tiffany Nation, Graduate Programs Coordinator informed the committee that today’s meeting is the last of the fall semester and that the next meeting is scheduled for Monday, February 9, 2026.
         
         VI.         Adjourn
         1:13 p.m.